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She reached for the crutches and got to her feet, her speculative gaze never leaving his face. “Maybe it is. I’m a big fan of old black and white horror movies, so that accent of yours is throwing me a bit.”
Rick was willing his facial muscles not to respond to her smile, but it was a losing battle. “So I sound like an old Hammer Horror movie to you, do I?”
“A little. The spooky Count Dracula, with a cut-glass accent. Living in a dark old stately home.”
She was taking him apart, piece by piece. This was much more difficult than dodging whatever she cared to throw at him. If he wanted to reach her, he’d have to give more of himself than he felt entirely comfortable with, but he was going to reach her.
“Stately homes aren’t my thing. I’m more of an inner-city kid. Let’s walk. It’s about time for afternoon coffee so we can go down to the main lounge.”
“I prefer the glass breezeway...you can see the ocean. You know where that is?”
Rick knew where that was—it led from the main clinic building to the surgical wing. Benches and planting made it a place where patients could feel connected with the outside during the winter.
They left the department, dawdling more and more slowly along the corridor together, as each matched the other’s pace.
“When are you going to start stepping out? So I have to make an effort to keep up with you?” she asked.
Right. So she already knew all those tricks. “I’m not planning on it. Clearly you can’t keep up...”
“Clearly not.” This time her obstinacy took the form of agreeing with him.
“It’s not such a bad thing. We can get to know each other a bit better on the way.”
“We could, I suppose...”
That worked. Fleur suddenly started to speed up, walking away from him. Rick hung back, studying her gait. She was tense, obviously afraid of falling, and seemed over-reliant on the crutches. But even that couldn’t conceal the straight back and graceful movements of a dancer.
He caught up with her as she reached the breezeway, and she waited while he opened the door. It seemed that Fleur found closed doors an impenetrable barrier, and he’d have to address that with her very soon. She walked across to one of the benches, which faced the sea, and Rick collected two cups of coffee from the machine in the corner, adding milk and sugar to the tray and setting it down on the bench between them.
“Since you’re new here, you can take as much time as you like to appreciate the view.”
It was clearly an invitation not to bother her for a while. The view was spectacular, snow piled on the ground with a backdrop of the iron-gray, restless sea. But somehow he couldn’t take his eyes off Fleur.
He pushed one of the cups toward her slightly. “Milk and sugar?”
“I’ll take some milk. Sugar’s all yours.”
“I don’t take sugar...”
He’d played straight into her hands, and she curled her lip. “That’s a pity, you could do with a bit of sweetening up.”
She could sweeten him up any time she liked. Rick rejected the thought, reminding himself that she was a patient. “So why did you choose the Maple Island Clinic? Since you’re obviously not overwhelmed with enthusiasm about being here.”
“I’m an islander. My parents live here and they’ve paid for my rehab.”
“You’re not giving them much value for money, though.”
She quirked her lips down. Rick had found a sore spot. “They can afford it. I wanted to go into rehab in Boston, but Dad wouldn’t hear of it, he wanted me to come here. There wasn’t much I could do about it, seeing as I wasn’t in a position to run away.”
Run away from what? Not the clinic surely? The Maple Island Clinic was proud of its reputation for being the best.
“So you come from the west side of the Island?”
She shook her head. “You’ve already noticed there’s a difference, then.”
“I’m told that the west side has a lot of very nice houses, and great views of Boston. The east side has the open sea and the harbor...”
“That’s right. We’re real islanders, not rich visitors. Both my parents were born here. They live near the harbor. My dad’s a writer.” The pride in her voice was unmistakable. It sounded as if she wasn’t running away from her parents either.
